


Mary Celeste

by BreakfastTea



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Badass Jim Kirk, Confusion, Dammit Jim, Don't mess with Jim's crew, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:27:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25115371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BreakfastTea/pseuds/BreakfastTea
Summary: Jim awakens one ordinary morning to find the Enterprise completely deserted....Or does he? He wakes up again a few minutes later to find Bones and Spock wondering why he's overslept.The dream felt so real.Is the dream reality? Is reality the dream? One way or another, Jim's got to find out before it's too late.
Comments: 32
Kudos: 92





	Mary Celeste

**Author's Note:**

> Hello Star Trek fandom! It has been way too long! 
> 
> The truth is I wrote this story back in 2016 but I couldn't get it to work to my liking. I left it in my cloud saves until this past weekend when I finally decided to fix it! What can I say, lockdown is good for fixing up four year old fanfics ^^;
> 
> Set between Into Darkness and Beyond. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy it ^_^

Jim awoke as he always did at 0500. He rolled out of bed, the familiar hum of the ship present as he washed and dressed. He grabbed his PADD and headed to the mess hall for breakfast. He liked to catch up with the overnight shift’s reports over a good coffee and a selection of pastries and fruit.

He strolled down the empty corridor. One of the perks of being an early riser was privacy. Not many people stirred as early as he did. Then again, not many needed to. Those were the joys of command, he lamented with a smile. Eyes on his PADD, he read over the night shift’s reports and saw nothing untoward. The ship was operating at 97% efficiency, which was fine for him. Nothing had exploded and no one had injured themselves. Good to know when they had a mission ahead of them. The _Enterprise_ was on the edge of the massive asteroid belt that had the geologists and astrophysicists excited, because deep within it appeared to be an exoplanet. A genuine abandoned planet. It was urban exploration on a planetary level. They’d already beamed samples aboard. The _Enterprise_ would be busy for the next few days.

And yet something niggled at the back of his mind. The vague sensation of a memory whispered at the edges of his consciousness. Something flashed past his mind’s eye, too fast to really comprehend. Did he have a meeting? Had he arranged to oversee something? Was it more important than that? A birthday? A memorial? Whatever it was, it danced out of reach.

Eyes still on his PADD, hoping he’d programmed a reminder into his schedule, Jim strolled into the mess hall.

Silence.

It took him a few seconds to look up. It wasn’t just that no one was talking.

No one was there.

But the mess hall was never, ever empty. It was like the fabled Mary Celeste; food and drinks sat on the tables, awaiting consumption, but whoever had ordered the meals had disappeared.

He grabbed his communicator out of his pocket. “Kirk to bridge.”

Silence crackled over the open line.

“Computer, is something wrong with the ship’s internal communication system?”

“Negative.”

What the hell was going on? Unease brewed in Jim’s gut. “How many lifesigns are there aboard the _Enterprise_?”

“One.”

The shock hit him like a gut punch.

“I’m the only lifeform aboard the ship?” Jim asked.

“Affirmative,” the computer said.

What the fuck? Adrenaline rushing through him, Jim tucked his PADD into his waistband and raced to the nearest turbolift. It took him to the bridge. He stepped out into emptiness. Every station was active, but no one sat or stood at them. He went to the ship’s systems station but nothing was amiss.

Aside from the entire crew being missing.

And that niggling in the back of his mind. What was it? What had he forgotten?

He went to navigation and checked the logs since he’d clocked off at the end of alpha yesterday. They were further into the asteroid field than he remembered them being, but that was it. It had to be something else. They must’ve passed by another ship or an ion storm. Some kind of anomaly to explain why he was alone.

Nothing.

Jim entered the communication network. No warnings. No incoming or outgoing transmissions.

Nothing was wrong, aside from the obvious.

“Computer, when did the crew leave the ship?” Jim demanded.

“Unknown.”

He rolled his eyes. “Wonderful.”

“Rephrase.”

Swallowing his sarcasm, Jim did as the computer requested. “When was the last time the crew were all present?”

“04:59.”

The minute before he woke up? No way. “How did they leave.”

“Unknown.”

The turbolift doors opened. Jim jolted. A humanoid figure clad in a black exosuit stood there, face hidden behind a helmet.

“Who are you?” Jim demanded. “What the hell have you done to my ship?”

The figure looked up from a device on their wrist and jerked to a standstill. Even with their face hidden, Jim read the shock written into him.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” the unknown figure said in a deep, male voice. “You should be gone.”

The niggle in Jim’s memory dug deeper. “Your voice. Do I know you?”

“This is impossible!” the man hissed. “You shouldn’t be here!”

Jim stood his ground. “Answer me! Who the hell are you, what have you done to my crew and what are you doing on my ship?”

The man raised his arm. “I promise this won’t hurt for long.” The device on his wrist spat out a bolt of light.

Blinded, agony burrowed into Jim’s skull. He fell to his knees. He reached for something, anything, to help him get back to his feet.

_“…hear me? Sir, you –”_

Jim’s hands closed around a chair and he pulled himself upright, his vision a blurry mess. “You can’t do this.”

“Damn you!” the man growled. “Stop fighting me!”

Another bolt hit Jim. This time, he was unconscious before he finished hitting the ground.

* * *

A chime drew him out of the blankness. He jerked upright, heart slamming against his ribs. He was in his quarters, sweat sticking his sheets to his body. He clapped his hands over his face and tried to steady his breathing.

The empty ship was a dream. That was it. A really intense dream.

“Holy shit,” Jim gasped.

The chime sounded out again. Someone was at his door. Head throbbing, he clambered out of his bed and went to the door. He touched the control and his door slid open.

Spock and Bones were there. Jim squinted at the unwelcome blast of bright light. Spock raised an eyebrow at Jim’s dishevelled state. Bones raised a tricorder and began scanning. Jim batted it away. “Bones, stop that.”

“Captain, you are over an hour late for your duty shift,” Spock said.

“I’m… what?” He tried to clear the sleep fuzz from his eyes. He ran a hand over his face. “Late?” he tried again.

“Are you well?” Spock asked.

“Bad dream, Jim?” Bones asked before Jim could answer. “Your adrenaline levels and blood pressure are sky high. And don’t think you can hide the headache from me.”

“I – uh –” He turned away from the light. “I have no idea what’s going on,” he admitted.

Bones stepped in and guided him back to the bed. “Sit.”

Jim sat. “I had a weird dream. Everyone had left the ship. Everyone except me and some guy.”

“Some guy, Captain?” Spock asked.

“He was dreaming,” Bones said. “Don’t encourage him.”

“It didn’t feel like a dream,” Jim said. He yawned. “I don’t think I’m awake yet.”

“You’ve got a fever,” Bones said. “Sounds like your overcooked brain is taunting you.”

Jim shook his head, regretting it immediately. “No. No, this felt real. Like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I woke up, got dressed, headed to the mess hall but everyone was gone. And I kept thinking I’d forgotten something.” It was all slipping away, the memory of the dream oozing out of his mind. “I went to the bridge. A man was there.” What had he wanted? His head pounded harder with every attempt to remember.

“Spock, you’d better get back to the bridge,” Bones said. “I’m placing Jim on medical leave until he’s shaken whatever’s making him sick.”

“Understood, Doctor.”

“Wait, Spock! Is that planet still out there?” Jim asked. “The dead one?”

“We have yet to reach it,” Spock said.

“Scan it. For everything.”

“We already have,” Spock said. “There are no life signs. No hint of recent habitation.”

“We missed something.” Jim clung to the memory of the man on the bridge, even as the other details washed away. “Where else could he have come from?”

Spock looked at McCoy who shrugged back at him. “Can’t hurt, but don’t be surprised if you don’t turn up anything. Fever’s gone up a degree already. He’s half out of it right now.”

“If you need me, I will be on the bridge,” Spock said. “Captain, may your health improve swiftly.”

“I’m serious, Spock!” Jim had to make them understand. How could they both be so blasé? “We have to find him before it’s too late. If you’re all still here, I might have a chance to stop him.”

“We will scan for lifeforms, Captain.” And with that, Spock took his leave.

Bones packed up his tricorder. “Alright, Jim, think you can walk to sickbay?”

“I can’t go to sickbay.” He had to find that man. It wasn’t a dream, it was real. He didn’t care if no one believed him, Jim _knew._ He felt it in his gut. He sprung to his feet, but his quarters orbited his head. He promptly plummeted back to his mattress. “Why’s it so hot in here?”

“It isn’t. You’re the one who’s too hot.” Bones gripped his forearms and guided Jim to his feet. “Let’s take this slow.”

They left Jim’s quarters. Outside, Bones released his grip and simply hovered at Jim’s side, ready to catch him if he should need to. Jim hated it, hated his own weakness. This wasn’t the time.

Unless it had just been a fever dream.

The corridor beyond his quarters was quiet. People were either on shift or sleeping off the last one. Jim couldn’t supress a shudder of unease. “The crew’s definitely all aboard?” he asked.

“Every single last one of them,” Bones said from behind.

“Computer, is every member of the crew aboard the ship?” Jim asked.

“Affirmative,” the computer replied.

Jim let out a breath. Maybe he had just suffered a weird fever dream.

“Don’t worry about them right now,” Bones said. “Let’s get you to sickbay and figure out what’s going on.”

Even with the computer’s confirmation, Jim’s eyes roved tirelessly. What if the man was on the ship right now? Something wasn’t right. He had that feeling again, the feeling he’d forgotten something.

 _“…out of time!_ ”

They reached the turbolift. Bones tapped the call button. Jim pressed his back to a nearby bulkhead and watched the corridor.

“Jim?”

“Just making sure he doesn’t get the jump on us.” He squinted down the hallway. “He shot me the last time. I can’t let him do that again.”

“He won’t,” Bones said. “He can’t, because he isn’t real. You’ve got a high fever. I am literally watching the numbers climb. It’s making you think all kinds of shit right now.”

Jim ignored him. He had to be sure. He still felt half-asleep. His eyes drooped.

“’Lift must be busy at this time of day,” Bones muttered.

Jim murmured some kind of response. He was too tired to talk. Too tired to open his eyes. Too tired to stand. What was wrong with him? His knees gave way. He sank down to the ground.

Down.

Down.

“The ship is perfect. The warp technology is so much more advanced than anything we ever had. I can take this ship. But how am I to operate it?”

Jim jerked awake. He was back on the bridge, flat out on the deck. He looked and saw the exosuited man staring at the ship’s operations station.

He knew it. He knew the man was real.

“Someone will have to show me,” the man muttered.

Jim forced himself to his feet. “No one’s showing you anything.”

The man turned to him, face still hidden behind the blacked out faceplate of his helmet. “Why won’t you just give in? You’re making this so much harder than it ought to be.”

“What is this?” Jim asked. “Am I dreaming?”

The man’s fist slammed down on the console. “This isn’t working!”

An alert sounded. “Warning,” the computer declared. “Unauthorised access to helm control detected. Course change laid in.”

“Belay that.” Jim went to helm control and hammered his security lockout into the station.

“Unable to comply,” the computer said. “Insufficient clearance. There is a security lockout placed over helm controls.”

“Your ship is mine,” the man said. “Tell me how to fly it!”

Jim swore. “What have you done?” How was he locked out? He pulled his PADD out and tried to access the helm, only to get the same result.

“If you won’t tell me, I’ll find another way.”

Footsteps dragged his attention back to the man. Jim saw him sprint off the bridge and into the corridor beyond.

“Dammit!”

Stowing his PADD again, Jim ran after him. Beyond the bridge, he caught sight of the man as he disappeared around the corner. A sharp pain in his temple sent him crashing into a nearby bulkhead. Tears sprung to his eyes. Jim pressed his hand to his head. He could feel something drilling in, delving deeper and deeper into his brain. Scraps of noise shrieked through his head. Shouting. Demanding. He couldn’t make out the words, but the voice felt familiar. Who was it? Jim forced himself to look around, but no one was there, not even the unknown man.

Jim pulled himself around the corner and saw the man step into turbolift. “Wait!”

The turbolift closed and descended.

The pain ebbed away, taking the noise with it. Jim reached the turbolift and slammed his palm against the call button. “Computer, locate this turbolift’s current location.”

“The turbolift is in engineering.”

Engineering? What the hell did he want down there? The possibilities were broad and horrifying. Jim closed his eyes. He needed to think. He had to come up with a plan, or else the _Enterprise_ would be lost and he’d never find the crew.

“Jim!”

A hand landed on his shoulder. He jolted, hands flailing to some kind of defence. He found himself on his back, staring up at Bones. “What?”

Bones frowned. “Your fever spiked. You blacked out.”

“I’m back?”

Real worry shone in Bones’ eyes. “You didn’t go anywhere. Except down to the deck.”

“No, no, no Bones, the ship is in danger! He’s in engineering. He could blow the whole ship up from down there. I have to stop him. I have to protect the ship.” Jim tried to get up. Bones pushed him back down. “Let me up!”

“No,” Bones said. “The ship is safe, Jim, I promise.”

“It isn’t. This can’t be real. He’s done something. I keep finding myself in this dream. It must be a defence mechanism.”

Something flickered across his memory again. Words he couldn’t grasp. A flash of a massive chamber he didn’t remember seeing before. A stabbing pain in his hands and head.

“Was I somewhere else?” Jim murmured. “I can’t remember.”

“I’d pinch you, but the hypos I’m gonna jab into you in sickbay will do the job for me.” Bones grabbed his shoulder. “You’re sick, Jim. That’s all this is.”

He wasn’t sick. Bones had it all wrong. “I’m not going to sickbay. I have to get to the bridge,” Jim said. “We need to run an internal scan, find out where that bastard’s hiding.”

A cool hand rested on his forehead. Jim couldn’t help himself. He leaned into the chill. “You’re burning up,” Bones said. “This fever gets any higher and you’re gonna run the risk of seizure. We need to get to sickbay. Come on, up. Let’s take this nice and slow.”

“But –”

Bones tightened his grip on Jim’s shoulder. “I know it doesn’t make any sense to you right now, but you have to believe me when I say you’re worried about things that aren’t real. But I’ll make sure Spock checks everything out, okay?”

Jim hesitated. What if Bones was right? What if that man and the empty ship and whatever the other weird things he saw were just fever dreams? “You swear you’ll get Spock to check it out?”

“You know I will.”

Jim nodded. “Good. You can’t afford to ignore me.”

“Yeah, yeah. That’s what you said about that Saurian brandy at the Academy, and which one of us went blind for two days?”

Jim laughed. “At least it was after finals.”

Bones helped Jim to his feet. The turbolift finally arrived and they stepped aboard. The lift descended. Jim was too heavy, his limbs weighed down by excess gravity no one else noticed. His head thudded onto his friend’s shoulder. Bones didn’t complain.

“I’m not even wearing boots,” Jim commented, wiggling his toes where they poked out from the frayed hems of his sweats. “I’m not even dressed!”

“That’s not the biggest concern right now,” Bones said. “No one’s gonna care. Uniform standards will not slip at the sight of you in sweats.”

Jim wrenched his wandering mind back on topic. No, the biggest concern was the fact that this might be a dream, and out there in reality, an unknown alien had stolen his crew and wanted to steal his ship. He slapped his own cheeks. “I need to wake up.”

“You are awake,” Bones said.

“Yeah, but if I’m not, the ship’s in danger and the alien forced me into this dream.” Pain rippled through his temple. He couldn’t hold in a grunt. He heard the snippet of a voice. He knew it. Recognised the cadence. But whoever it was, he couldn’t make out the exact words. “Who is that?”

“Jim?” Bones sounded worried. About to hit red alert worried.

“I can hear someone talking to me.”

“Your fever’s so high I’m not surprised you’re a hallucinating.”

This was getting old. Jim didn’t have time to be doubted. “Dammit, Bones, I’m not hallucinating! I need to wake up. Everyone’s gone and here I am, talking to a version of you who’s a figment of my imagination!”

Bones patted his shoulder. “Let’s continue this conversation after I’ve got that fever under control. You’ll feel a little more rational by then.”

“I’m not being irrational!” Shouting was not helping his headache. 

“Sure you aren’t.” 

The turbolift arrived on sickbay’s deck and Bones took Jim out. A short walk later, they were in sickbay. Bones dropped Jim on a nearby biobed. The bed’s sensors lit up. Alerts sounded above Jim’s head. Bones called a nurse over. He listed a number of drugs, but Jim zoned out halfway through the list. Was this real? Was he here, aboard the ship, his crew intact? Or was the ship really in danger, his crew lost?

Which version was reality?

A hypospray to the neck brought him back to reality with a sharp bite. Jim stared up at Bones in surprise. “I’m still here?”

“Your fever is hovering just below 105 so yeah, you’re still here. You should get some sleep. It’s what your body needs.” A nurse stepped up to Bones and handed over a few cooling packs. “The confusion will clear and all of this will start to feel real again, just like it should.” Bones dumped a cool cloth over Jim’s forehead. It covered his eyes. “This is exactly where you need to be. Sleep. The ship and the crew will still be here when you wake up.”

Sleep sunk its claws into him. “Don’t let him into engineering.” His eyes closed. “I’m serious.”

A hand brushed gently through his hair. “I know you are, Jim.”

He couldn’t fight it any longer. Jim fell asleep.

* * *

_“…will die!”_

Jim jerked awake outside the turbolift. Alone. No one nearby to shout at him. He looked up. The lift’s doors stood open, waiting patiently for him to step in. Jim leapt to his feet. He felt fine here; no fever or confusion. Alright, maybe he had a mild headache, but his thoughts were nimble and sharp. He stepped into the lift and ordered it to take him to engineering. He had to stop the threat.

Jim entered the main engineering admin area and grabbed a standard issue phaser. “Computer, locate the intruder.”

The computer gave a negative squawk. “Unable to comply. There is only one lifeform aboard the _Enterprise_.”

So, the bastard could hide his biosigns from the computer. It had to be something to do with his exosuit.

The ship’s lighting flicked to red. “Warning,” the computer declared. “Unauthorised access to primary systems detected.”

“Which systems?” Jim demanded.

“Life support and environmental controls.”

“Shit. Where are they being accessed from?”

“From the central environmental control.”

“Override access on my authority.” Jim gave out his access code.

“Unable to comply,” the computer replied. “Clearance code is of an insufficient level.”

The man wanted to play dirty? Fine. Two could play at that game. “Lock all access points in and out of the area, including Jefferies tubes,” Jim ordered. “Confirm lockdown will only be issued on my authority.”

“Lockdown confirmed.”

Jim ran out of the engineering office and sprinted down the corridor. It was a hard run, the air already thinning. When he reached the environmental control center, he heard dull thudding coming from the doorway. He saw the man through the window and his useless escape attempt. No way would be able to punch or kick his way through this doorway.

The man spotted Jim staring. “How are you doing this?” he demanded. “You shouldn’t even be here, this shouldn’t be happening, and you definitely shouldn’t be capable of stopping me!”

“No more games,” Jim snapped. “What did you do to my crew?”

“Your crew?” The man laughed. “You have no idea what’s going on, do you?”

Pain in his head.

A memory he couldn’t grasp.

A chamber.

Darkness.

A voice he knew but couldn’t properly hear.

The man’s voice brought him back to the present. “Let me out of this chamber. I’ll reactive life support and we can come to an agreement.”

“An agreement?” Jim asked.

“You’re the only thing standing between me and your ship. Something tells me you’re not going to give up easily.”

“Tell me what you’ve done to my crew,” Jim demanded.

“Your crew are of no consequence!” The man shouted. “I want your ship, and you are going to give it to me.”

“No, I’m not.” Jim pulled his PADD out of his waistband and ensured it was connected to the shipwide network. He typed a series of commands. The computer accepted them. Thank goodness. He hadn’t been locked out of this essential system. The self-destruct activated, loudly announcing a five-minute countdown. However, instead of allowing the system to unlock every section of the ship to facilitate an easier escape, Jim sealed the ship. He’d destroy the _Enterprise_ if he had to, but he had a couple of other tricks up his sleeve yet.

After all, any captain worth their stripes prepared for every eventuality.

“You’ll murder us?” the man demanded. “Just to stop me?”

“You’re damn right,” Jim shot back.

The man thumped the thick glass separating them. “How can you be such a fool? I’m too important to die, you pathetic creature! Give me your ship, and you don’t have to die! Nothing is as it seems.” He broke off into a series of mutters and mumbles. “Shouldn’t be happening! He shouldn’t be _capable_.”

“Look, you want to negotiate? Fine. You’ve got four minutes to convince me I need to shut the self-destruct down.”

The man threw his hand out, dismissing Jim. “I don’t negotiate with the likes of you!”

Jim held tight to his nerve. He couldn’t give into his fear. “Then I guess we’re both gonna die.”

“No. We’re not.”

The man’s voice suddenly came from behind. Jim didn’t have a chance to turn around. A hand clamped around the base of Jim’s neck. Paralysis claimed his limbs. Jim couldn’t fight back.

How had the man escaped environmental control? Had he transported? Walked through walls? Manipulated time? All three and far more were possible out here in unknown space.

“Turn off the self-destruct, and I’ll tell you where your crew is,” the man snapped.

“Tell me where my crew is, and I’ll disengage the self-destruct,” Jim said.

Sharp needles dug into Jim’s neck. He gasped at the startling pain. His vision faded, taking sound with it.

Until voices. He heard…

_“It’s no good, I can’t get them out. It looks as though they’re running into his brain.”_

_“Alright, don’t keep trying. Monitor his condition. I’ll be down as soon as I can.”_

“If you want answers to your questions, disengage the self-destruct now!” the man hissed, dragging Jim back into full consciousness. “Otherwise you’ll die, and so will they!”

Shit. Jim had no other option. He couldn’t risk his crew like that. Jim called out to the computer and shut down the self-destruct. “Now, tell me where they are.”

“No.”

The needles dug deeper. He felt them wind their way into his brain. He wanted to scream, wanted to fight, but his body couldn’t respond. Nerves shredded, the world lost cohesion. Jim’s knees buckled. He hit the deck hard.

“For the last time, Captain Kirk, you are not supposed to be here. Be gone, so I can take what I want!”

Jim fought to keep his eyes open. Each blink was slower, heavier, harder. He couldn’t fight it. The needles in his neck retracted, but whatever was in his head, winding around his brain, that was still there.

His eyes slid closed.

“Your battle is over,” the man said.

Jim jolted hard off the deck. Lights flared in his eyes. Garbled noise stabbed into his ears. Hands grabbed him, lifted him, deposited him on something long, flat, cushioned…

Cushioned?

“Dammit, Jim, you trying to wake up every other patient in sickbay?”

Jim blinked hard to clear his eyes. The fractured smears of light and colour resolved themselves into sickbay.

And a heavily frowning Doctor McCoy.

“Bones?” His voice was hoarse and thin. His body ached relentlessly. A grinding headache ate into his brain. Prickling heat bubbled under his skin. Nausea swirled in his stomach. “What is going on?”

“I know I told you to get some sleep, but a borderline coma wasn’t what I had in mind.” Bones studied the biobed’s readouts. “You’ve been out for three days.”

“Three days?”

“Nothing we did woke you up. And believe me, we tried everything.”

“You didn’t get it out of my head?”

McCoy frowned. “Get what out of your head?”

“Wires. Needles.” Jim’s hands went to his head. He found nothing unexpected. The only thing hooked up to him was an IV. “When did you all get back?” He asked. “And what did you do with the intruder?”

McCoy sighed. “Still stuck on that, are you?” He reached over and grabbed a cooling cloth. He placed it on Jim’s forehead. “Your fever’s down, but I’m still getting strange readings.”

“Strange how?”

“Something in the brain. It’s almost like a sensor echo. I’ve tried every scan I can think of, but nothing’s coming up. Short of exploratory surgery, which I’m not about to do, by the way, I’ve got no way of telling what it is.”

“He put something in my head. Whatever it is, it must be disrupting your scans.”

McCoy grabbed a chair and sat next to his friend. “Listen, before you took your three-day siesta, you kept telling me about a man taking over the ship and removing the crew.”

“Right,” Jim said, struggling against the drowsiness telling him to go back to sleep. The brain melting headache wasn’t much fun either. “He got into environmental control. I was gonna blow the ship up, but I couldn’t do it.”

McCoy cocked an eyebrow.

“He kept telling me I wasn’t supposed to be there.” Jim pressed the back of his hand to his head. “It felt so real.”

“Does any of this feel real now?” McCoy asked.

“What if it’s all real?” Jim asked. “There and here.”

“Whatever you think’s happened to the ship is all in your head. Trust me, all your readouts from the past three days told us you were in a dreaming state. You haven’t been anywhere. You haven’t accidentally hopped universes or travelled through time or any of that weird shit that happens in space. You’ve been here for three days. You missed all the fun of the asteroid field though.”

“If I was only dreaming, why did it feel so real?” Jim asked.

“You’re sick, Jim. How bad’s the headache?”

Jim released a breath. “I have one.”

“So it’s bad.” Bones waved a hypo. “Good thing I have something for that.”

Jim accepted it silently. “There’s really nothing out there?”

“Nothing alive.” Bones grabbed a PADD. “Let me see. Alright, we’re currently scanning the dead planet our geologists are losing their minds over. We picked it up on scanners four days ago. Do you remember?”

“Yeah. It was completely abandoned, like everyone had just flown off and never come back.”

“Right,” Bones said. “Do you also remember that they beamed some samples of the machinery aboard?”

Jim did remember that.

“You went down and saw the specimen?” Bones asked.

“Of course I did.” Now that he was thinking about it, Jim remembered stopping by the lab right after everything had been beamed aboard. “The geologists were only just running preliminary scans. It was machinery, seriously intricate, but they had no idea what it was used for.”

“Did you touch anything?” Bones asked.

Jim shot him a look. “I’m not that stupid.”

Bones continued reading over the report. “Sulu’s piloting a course to the dead planet, which is pretty tricky seeing as how half the asteroids around here are practically planet-sized too. Other than that, no ships. No alien lifeforms. No beacons. No satellites. Nothing. We are totally alone out here.” Bones offered Jim a glass of water. “Whatever’s wrong with you, you must’ve picked it up on that last planet we were on. The L-Class one with all the ice. Didn’t I tell you a ship-wide snowball fight would end in tears?”

“That was last week. Wouldn’t I have shown symptoms sooner? And it’s not like I went down there alone. Is anyone else sick?”

“No, it’s just you.”

Jim drained the glass and leaned back. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it was all a dream.” He pressed the cold compress to his head. “But if this is the dream, we’re in trouble out there in reality.”

“Listen, unless you and the _Enterprise_ found a way to be in two places at once, it was definitely a dream. Last time I checked, we didn’t have any unknown aliens aboard the ship.”

The words rang hollow, but Jim nodded anyway.

“Now, if we can get this fever down another degree, I’ll even let Spock come down here and bore you into a healthy sleep,” Bones said. “Sound good?”

Jim held out a hand. “Can I at least have a PADD? Let me catch up on everything I missed.”

Bones handed it over. “Just put it down on a flat surface before you fall asleep a couple minutes from now. I’ll be back to check to you soon. You woke up on a busy day.”

“What happened?”

“A plasma conduit blew out in environmental control.”

Jim snapped upright, regardless of the pain and nausea it sent through him. “Environmental control? Bones, that’s –”

“It was nothing to do with anything you just told me.” Bones pushes him back down. “Dammit, Jim, don’t do anything that might make this fever spike again. You need to rest. It’s just a coincidence. A few of the crew suffered burns. I need to check on them.”

“Are they're gonna be okay?”

“Yeah. And so’s the ship. Scotty’s already fixed it up. It was snowing on the bridge for a while, but it didn’t last for long.”

Forcing himself to steady his breathing, Jim waved the PADD. “I'll be here.”

“You better be. Oh, and don’t you dare comm any other section aboard this ship. You’re off duty until I say so.”

“Aye, sir.”

Bones left him to it. Jim accessed the ship's status report. There were signs the asteroid field had been a mining area a very, very long time agon. Pre-Federation Earth had done similar things in Starfleet’s early days. He brought up the geologists’ reports from their initial sample.

 _It appears to be an incredibly complex computer circuitry. Origin unknown. It does not match anything in the Federation database._ _Scans and observations suggest it still has power. We’ve isolated it from the ship’s main systems to avoid any kind of trouble. We may soon have a rudimentary interface rigged up so that we can access whatever data is stored within it._

He glanced at the time stamp. It was several days old. He wanted to request an update. He felt certain they had to know more. Actually, he felt like maybe he knew more, but the dull headache bouncing around behind his eyes broke his concentration. Bones said he couldn’t call anyone. He didn’t say anything about old fashioned text messages. He fired one off to the head of geology. An icon on screen told Jim someone on the other end was typing a response.

The ship quaked around him before he could read what was written. He saw the red alert light up. Unlike other areas of the ship, sickbay didn’t dim down in an emergency, not when the ship had enough power. Jim was out of bed and clinging onto the IV pole. Being upright after three days flat on his ass felt bad. Extremely bad. Likely to hurl bad.

“Oh, no you don’t.” Bones was already there, blocking Jim’s escape. “Sit down. Spock can handle it.”

“Handle what, exactly?” Jim demanded.

“We probably bumped into something. The asteroid field is huge.”

“Bridge to Sickbay.” It was Uhura. “Doctor McCoy, can I speak with the Captain?”

“I’m here, Uhura. What is it?”

“Captain, this is going to sound strange, but we’ve reached the rogue planet in the asteroid field. Scans suggest it was knocked out of its orbit a very long time ago. No one’s alive down there. There isn’t even an atmosphere, but there’s a transmission coming from the surface and it’s mentioning you by name.”

Jim stared at Bones. This had to mean something. This had to be connected with whatever was happening to him. “You’re right, Uhura, that is strange.” Could it have something to do with the intruder in the exosuit? “Can you patch the transmission through? I don’t think Bones is gonna let me up to the bridge.”

“Damn right I won’t.”

“Doctor, I’ll patch it through to your personal communicator. I don’t think we should broadcast this for all of sickbay to hear.”

Bones flipped his communicator open. “Let’s hear it, Uhura.”

“Transmitting now.”

The voice was heavily distorted, but beneath the crackling waves and pulses of static, someone spoke.

 _“... Kirk. Listen closely. You need to… You’re not where you… You’re not… Wake up. You have to listen to me!_ ” A wave of distortion broke through. “ _We’re still… planet._ ” Whatever was said next didn’t break through.

“Sorry, sir,” Uhura said. “I’ll try to get it back.”

“I know that voice,” Jim said, eyes wide.

“You do?” Uhura asked. “I cleared it up as best I could, but it’s nobody I know.”

A cold shudder wormed through Jim’s spine. “You don’t recognise it?”

“No,” Uhura said, sounding confused. “No, I don’t think –”

Jim backed up a step. Bones moved to go with him, but Jim held out an arm to ward him off. “Uhura,” his voice came out hard and sharp. “That’s your voice.”

“Sir, I know you’ve been sick, but –”

“Who the hell are you?” Jim demanded. “Where’s the real Lieutenant Uhura? She’s too damn good at her job to make a mistake like that.”

“Doctor? I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have –”

Bones stepped up, tricorder out and scanning. “Ignore him, Uhura. His fever’s rising. I’m not surprised if he’s having trouble comprehending – ”

Jim batted the instrument away. “Who the hell are you?”

Bones grabbed the communicator out of his hand and snapped it shut. “Jim, it’s me. That voice you heard isn’t Uhura. How can it be? She’s on the bridge right now.”

“No. No, this can’t be happening. None of this is real. The other ship, with the intruder. He’s done something. I’m stuck there.” He pressed his hands to his pounding head. “I’m stuck somewhere. This can’t be real.”

Hands up, Bones crept forward. “Let’s get you back to bed, okay?”

Jim shoved Bones away. Bones hit the deck, a hypospray spinning away. People came running. Jim ripped the IV free of his arm and sprinted for the exit. Hot blood spurted down his arm. He didn’t care. It didn’t matter. This probably wasn’t even real. He had to get out. He had to get away. He made it to the main door.

A flash of white caught Jim’s attention. It was one of sickbay’s bulkier nurses. The man crashed into him. They smashed into the deck. Breath exploding from his lungs, Jim was too dazed too fight back.

“Dammit, Jim.” Bones approached. He didn’t look happy, and he had that hypo in his hand again. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

A bitter laugh escaped Jim. “You’re the doctor. You figure it out. Oh. Wait. None of this is real.”

“Smartass.” Bones raised a hypo.

“No! No, don’t give me that! I have to get out of here. Let me up! Let me go!” Jim tried to fight, but the nurse had a solid hold on him.

Bones stabbed the hypo home. “Let’s get that fever down before you blow out what few braincells grace that thick head of yours.” Bones nodded to the nurse and Jim was hauled off the ground.

Jim wasn’t going to be dissuaded. He wasn’t convinced yet he didn’t need to make another break from the bridge, even if his head was spinning and his body felt like it weighed an extra fifty pounds. “That was Uhura’s voice! She’s on that planet!”

“No, it wasn’t. Sounded like some random guy.”

“Bones.” Jim shrugged off the nurse and grabbed his friend’s shoulders. “If you’re who you say you are, you have to listen to me.”

“Jesus, Jim, of course I’m –”

“Something is very, very wrong here. None of this is real. I’m dreaming.” He pressed a hand to the back of his neck. There were wounds there.

Bones pulled his hand away. “Leave those. You must’ve hurt yourself when you fell out of bed.”

Wrong. Wrong, all wrong. The pain in Jim’s skull growled, a low warning sound promising worse was to come. “The ship is under attack. I don’t know what it is, and I don’t know how it’s doing it, but it’s got something to do with that message. Even if it isn’t Uhura, you can’t deny how weird it sounded.”

“Okay, it was weird, but it wasn’t Uhura. You’re paranoid. Really paranoid. And if there is something going on in your brain, I don’t want you up and walking.” Bones slipped a hand around Jim’s shoulders. “Back to bed. Just tell me what you want Spock to know.”

“There’s got to be something on that dead planet.” Jim squeezed his eyes shut, pinching his nose between a finger and thumb. “Someone, maybe. I – ”

His vision whited out. Other voices filled his ears.

_“Did you hear that?”_

_“Yes, I did. It sounded like a voice. I’ll begin a language analysis.”_

_“Is there any chance someone survived down here?”_

_“If they did, sir, we’re going to need to talk to them_.”

“ _There’s a computer here. Looks like it still has power.”_

_“Wow.”_

_“I know. Touchscreen technology. I – ah!”_

_“Sir?”_

“Jim? Jim!” Someone patted his cheeks. “Don’t go catatonic on me.”

Jim frowned. Why was Bones looking down at him? He tried to sit up, but he couldn’t. Not because he felt so unwell, but because something kept him down.

His feet and arms were restrained.

“No. No, no, no. Bones, you wouldn’t.”

“You aren’t leaving me a choice. You’re a danger to yourself.”

“No, I’m not!” He tried to pull himself free, but the restraints were designed for far stronger species than a mere human. “Who are you? What did you do with the real Bones?”

“Calm down, Jim.”

“How am I supposed to calm down? None of this is right! It’s my ship. I have to –”

Another hypospray pressed against his neck. “You need to calm down.”

“No, I need to –” Weariness crashed over him. Whatever Bones had given him, it was fast acting. He was going to pass out. “Bones, whatever’s wrong, you’re in danger.” Jim couldn’t keep his eyes open. “Everyone’s in danger.”

“I’m gonna scan your brain, and when you wake up, I’ll know more about what’s going on in your head.”

“The planet. It’s got to be…”

“Give in, Jim.” Bones rested a hand on Jim’s cheek. “Haven’t we already lost?”

It took everything Jim had in him to force his eyes open. Everything was swimming, out of focus. Bones was there, looking down at him.

And so was the man in the exosuit.

“Give in, Captain. There’s no escaping this one.” He placed a gloved hand over Jim’s eyes. “Not this time. Your ship is mine.”

Jim’s vision washed out to nothingness.

* * *

He came to on the deck outside the environmental control area. He hauled himself to his feet before the urge to sleep again overcame him. The exhaustion didn’t shift. It weighed down on him. He had to get to the bridge. If he didn’t, there’s be no stopping it. What had the message from Uhura said? He needed to wake up. Well, he was awake again now.

Wasn’t he? Fuck, this was irritating!

Uhura had also mentioned the planet. Had the intruder somehow trapped the crew down there?

Jim jogged to the nearest turbolift and took it back to the bridge. He had to keep pacing. He didn’t just feel tired, he felt partially sedated. The slightest loss of concentration would probably have him passing out again. And if this was the real world, and that other place was an illusion, he had even more reason to stay awake.

But it was hard. He felt himself slipping. He jolted into full consciousness, heart slamming against his ribs. Too close. Way too close. The turbolift opened onto the bridge. It was still empty. On the viewscreen, he could see asteroids and the planet below. He went to Spock’s station and scanned for life-forms. And there they were. The crew. All of their biosigns were strong. No one was injured. Relief flooded him. He had to grip Spock’s station to keep himself upright. He studied the readouts. It looked like they were all asleep. He moved to Uhura’s planet and opened a channel. “ _Enterprise_ to crew. If anyone can hear me, I need you to respond.”

Silence.

He went to Chekov’s station and routed transporter controllers to it. He locked onto the lifesigns. It didn’t work with everyone. In fact, it only locked onto ten. Jim beamed them directly to the bridge. They appeared, all clad in exosuits. One by one, he pulled off their helmets. It was the geology team.

And Uhura.

He gave her a gentle shake. “Uhura. Wake up.”

She didn’t stir.

“Uhura, I got your message. Come on. Wake up!”

It was no good. She wasn’t responding.

Jim tried to lock the transporters onto the other biosigns, but the interference from the planet’s surface was too high.

“Captain, why do you continue to fight me? Why won’t you stay where I put you?” The man in the exosuit strolled out of the turbolift. Jim grabbed a phaser from where he kept on in his chair. “The ship has to be mine. Your crew is fine. You’ve been with them. As far as they’re concerned, they’re all hard at work on their latest mission. Your friend, the doctor, is trying to heal you. Why won’t you just let him? Stay there. Be well. Live the remainder of your life.”

“So that is a dream,” Jim said. “And this is reality.”

“A shared dream. Your own sheer stubborn will has kept you from fully integrating with it.”

Jim frowned. “What do you mean?”

“The duties of command weigh heavily upon you,” the man said. “I understand that. Every time I try to pin you down in here, your own mind fights back. You’ve twisted the dream, no matter what I try. So I will simply have to be open and honest with you.”

“That’d be a good idea.”

The man paced. “My people have slept for millennia in the bowels of our dead world, waiting for someone to find us.”

A memory flashed over Jim’s mind. “The plaza. We… we beamed down. We found a huge plaza.”

“Yes, the Central Stasis Hall is directly below there.”

“Uhura and I went with the geology team.”

“And you found us.”

_Pods. Thousands of them. As far as the eye could see, silent and –_

“Something was wrong with them,” Jim said.

“No!” The man’s voice sounded hysterical. “Nothing was wrong. I have looked out for them. Protected them for all this time. And now you have delivered your ship to us. We’re taking it, and giving you over to our stasis pods until someone finds you as you found us.”

Jim shook his head. “I cannot allow that.”

“It’s already too late.”

“We might be able to help your people, but not when you take mine,” Jim said.

“Help us?” The man laughed. “Nobody ever helped us.”

“You’ve been down there for a very long time,” Jim said, hoping he sounded calm and not just exhausted and frustrated. “Things have changed. Helping people is what we do. We’re from the United Federation of Planets. It’s our duty to support others in any way that we can. If you would just talk to us, rather than take our ship from us and force us into a dream, you might find out just how much we can do for you.”

“I don’t negotiate! I don’t have to!” the man shrieked. “I will take your ship!”

“You panicked pretty hard when I threated to blow it up. If we die here, I guess we die out there in the real world. Computer, activate –”

“No, stop!” the man cried out.

“Alright.” Jim pressed a hand to his ever present headache. He desperately needed to remember more, but he couldn’t. Something still wasn’t right. His recollections of the dead planet ended with the fields of stasis pods. He knew something about them was odd, but he couldn’t think of what it was. “Release my crew. Let them come back to the ship, and I’ll discuss ways the Federation can help you. We may be able to find a suitable colony world for you all.”

“How can I trust you?” the man asked.

“How can you trust the man whose crew you’ve abducted and trapped in a dream world, who could make threats of vengeance but is instead offering you a peaceful solution?”

The man sighed. “Very well. I see your point.”

Jim dropped the phaser and kicked it away. “Work with me. Work with us. It doesn’t have to end this way.”

The man reached up to a device strapped around his wrist. He hit the screen and the next thing Jim knew, he was in the mess hall, his crew spilled out around him in the exosuits.

“Computer, are all members of the crew aboard the _Enterprise_?” Jim asked.

“Working,” the computer announced. A few seconds later, it announced its findings. “The entire crew is aboard.”

“The shared dream I’ve locked them in won’t stop until I shut down the machine running it on the planet,” the man said. “Come down to the surface with me. I’ll shut it down, and I can show you my people, so that we can work out a way to save them together.”

“Alright,” Jim said.

* * *

Exosuit in place, Jim beamed down to the planet. The man accompanied him, his own suit protecting him. They materialised in the middle of a huge plaza. Once upon a time it may have had been beautiful, lit by sunlight and full of people. Instead, it was draped in darkness and frozen under thick sheets of ice. The only lights came from the exosuits and the stars. Jim knew it was only a fluke of gravity that kept the other asteroids in the belt from pummelling the planet’s surface.

“I’ve been here before,” Jim said.

“Yes, when you first came to this world,” the man said. “The dream overrode your memory. It will take some time for it to come back.”

Jim had never seen anything like it. Nothing stirred. How could it? There wasn’t an atmosphere. “How did you survive this?”

“We got as many people off planet as we could when the planet’s orbit of our star decayed. Those of us who didn’t make it to the ships in time had no choice but to enter stasis pods. We believed we’d be revived by our own people who would come back to find us. But it was your ship who triggered my revival. When I realised you weren’t my people, I took your ship for my own.”

“You tried,” Jim said.

The man nodded. “I shouldn’t have been so self-serving. It was always my weakness.”

“Why were you the first to be revived?” Jim asked.

“It was always going to be my duty to ensure the safety of my people. I am their king. After my behaviour, it is hardly a title I deserve. Please, call me Ramiel, Captain.”

They crossed the plaza. A small doorway stood at the very edge. It didn’t have a handle, but when Ramiel pressed the glove of his exosuit to a panel, it glowed to life and the door slid aside. Behind was a massive spiral staircase. They descended.

“Have you ever heard of my people?” Ramiel asked. “Our species is the Karostan.”

“No,” Jim said. “But this is uncharted space to the Federation. Every planet is new to us. Your people could’ve found sanctuary on any number of other worlds. We just haven’t come across them yet.”

“The Federation sounds wonderful. Countless species coming together for the greater good. When our world lived, we had yet to find other people. We explored nearby worlds, but we didn’t truly reach out into space until we had no other option.”

It took several long minutes to reach the bottom of the stairs, by which point the constant circling had rendered Jim dizzy. Ramiel repeated his glove trick with the door at the bottom. This time, the chamber beyond lit up.

“I can’t believe there’s still power down here,” Jim said. He wandered in. There were stasis pods as far as the eye could see. Déjà vu struck again. “How many people are down here?”

“ _Can you believe how many pods are down here, Captain?”_

 _“No. Are any of them still alive?_ ”

“Roughly two thousand.”

Jim startled. He’d forgotten Ramiel was with him. “Two thousand? We can’t get that many –”

“Aboard the _Enterprise,_ I know. I’ve been in your systems. I know everything there is to know about your ship. But you’ll be able to have other ships brought out here to pick us up, yes?”

“It might take a while,” Jim said. “It would probably best to keep your people in stasis until relief ships arrive. And even then, you’d have to be separated. There isn’t a single ship in the Federation that can carry all of you.”

“I understand,” Ramiel said. “They have waited a thousand years. A few more weeks won’t hurt.” He stopped at a console. “The shared dreaming is generated from here. I’ll shut it down. Your crew should come around within the hour.”

“Thank you.” Jim walked past the stasis pods. The people within were humanoid, with facial ridges humans didn’t possess. Their skin was a beautiful shade of lilac.

_They were all dead. All of them. Fields of bodies, locked in tubes._

Jim had never encountered another species like them. “Are they dreaming like my crew?”

“No,” Ramiel said. “What I did to your crew was designed to be a defensive mechanism in case anyone attacked us. I altered it when I detected your ship so that it would render your crew unconscious.”

“Except me.” Jim thought for a moment. “And Uhura. At least to begin with.”

“Yes. She had impressive mental shielding, but it couldn’t hold on for long. She must’ve seen me take you and managed to get a message out before the dreaming consumed her.”

“I don’t have mental shielding. How come I’m awake? You know, relatively speaking.” He was several coffees and a good night’s sleep off of _awake_.

“I think because when I attacked you, I caused brain damage.”

Panic unfurled in Jim’s gut. “You did what?”

“When you beamed down, I panicked. I attacked. You all fought back. You were especially determined. I stunned your team, but you and your officer, Uhura, dodged. I had to fight you physically, and your exosuit was damaged. I didn’t want you to die; I wanted to strand you and your people here. I took you back to your ship and spread the dreaming to everyone aboard. You hadn’t regained consciousness, so I assumed you wouldn’t. I used your ship’s medical equipment to treat you as best I could, then used your computer to locate you quarters where I left you to rest. I beamed your people down to the planet, and when I went to find you, you were gone. You kept slipping in and out of the dream. I’ll be honest, Jim, you frightened me. You all did. But I made a mistake, one I hope to correct.”

“Don’t worry,” Jim said. “It’s going to be alright. For now, let’s get back to the _Enterprise_. I need to revive my crew, and I’ll need to alert Starfleet so –”

A wave of nauseous dizziness rose up inside him. He leaned over the nearest stasis pod. He took several deep breaths. Throwing up right now would be very, very bad.

“Jim?”

“I need to get back to my ship.” Exhaustion swamped him. If he wasn’t careful, he’d likely fall asleep where he stood. “I’m not feeling so good.”

Ramiel cursed. “Damn, I’m a fool. I shouldn’t have brought you down here until you were well enough. The shared dream is still affecting you. And you were injured in our initial encounter.”

“ _I know you can hear me! You have to fight!”_

Jim’s knees gave out. Ramiel hurried over and lifted Jim’s arm over his shoulder. “Let’s get back to the surface. You won’t be able to get back to your ship unless you’re up there.”

“You can still access our transporters?” Jim asked.

“Yes. Don’t worry. We’ll get you back to your ship.”

The journey up the spiral staircase hurt. Jim’s legs could barely take it, and if he felt dizzy before, now he swore he was a satellite rapidly orbiting the dead planet. By the time they reached the surface, he was wholly reliant on Ramiel’s support. “Something’s wrong.”

“Sit,” Ramiel said. “Rest. I’ll access the transporter.”

Jim slumped onto his side. He didn’t have the energy for much more. Moments later, he felt the tingling of the transporter envelope him. The next moment, he was in the transporter room, Ramiel at his side. Jim shed his helmet. He just about kept his stomach contents in place. His head pounded.

“What can I do to help you?” Ramiel asked.

Until Bones or another member of the medical staff regained consciousness, Jim was stuck with it. “Let’s get to the bridge. We need to open a channel with Starfleet so I can get other ships out here to help your people.” He stood up. The transporter room tilted. Ramiel caught him. “Thanks,” Jim said faintly. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I can move yet.”

“I’ve done such a terrible thing,” Ramiel said. “Not only have I attacked your crew, I’ve injured you. What kind of leader am I?”

“One who put the lives of two thousand people ahead of everything else.” Flicks of jagged light curved around the edges of Jim’s vision. He ignored it. “I understand, don’t worry. But next time, you should try talking. The galaxy is a big place, full of all kinds of people. A lot of us are pretty nice.”

“Understood.”

“Good. Now.” Jim held out a hand and waggled his fingers. ”Help me up.”

“But, Jim, forgive me for saying, but you do not appear healthy. I can smell the sickness upon you, and from what little I’ve observed of humans, I do not think you should be sweating the way you are.”

“Probably not, but we have to contact Starfleet. The sooner we do, the sooner you and your people can restart your lives.”

Ramiel carefully helped him to his feet. Jim’s vision winked out in his left eye. He knew that was bad. The pain buzzing in his brain was bad. Really, really bad. Jim said nothing.

“It’s a good thing I have your ship’s layout memorised,” Ramiel said. “I know exactly how to get to the bridge.”

“Great,” Jim said.

They reached the bridge. It felt too fast, like Jim had passed out momentarily and woken up right where he wanted to be. The light stabbed into Jim’s right eye. He groaned.

“What’s wrong?” Ramiel said.

“Light’s too bright,” Jim muttered. He could feel tears prickling his eyes. He couldn’t keep them open. “Did you memorise the bridge’s layout, too?”

“No. I’m sorry. I didn’t have time. I was too busy chasing you around.”

Jim chuckled. It was a stupid idea. The pain drove him to his knees. His limbs detached from his brain, the messages no longer getting through.

“Jim? Jim! Talk to me!”

But he couldn’t form words. Couldn’t think. Everything was sluggish, his thoughts stuck in tarry molasses.

“If you don’t wake up, how will I explain all of this to your crew? They won’t understand! They’ll panic, just like I did. What if they hurt me? What if they abandon my people?”

The voice… who was that again? Did he have a name? Whoever it was needed to calm down. The crew would understand… whatever the problem was. What was the problem? Was there a problem? Hell if Jim knew.

“You have to wake up!”

But he didn’t.

He couldn’t.

_“Jim! You can’t do this for much longer!”_

“Wake up!”

“ _Captain! Jim! Please, you have to wake up! You have to fight this and –”_

Everything went black.

* * *

“Finally left the bridge, huh?”

“Doctor, while humans may find it customary to keep vigil at an unwell person’s bedside, Vulcans find the practice highly illogical when our time can be utilised far more effectively.”

“So Uhura sent you down?”

“Yes.” The concession came out after the briefest hesitation.

“She’s good for you.”

“Yes, I believe she is.”

“He’s fine. At last. It took a while, but – ”

The conversation wandered away. Jim opened his eyes. He saw sickbay. He jolted up. He expected restraints, but only a blanket covered him. Was this real? He remembered Ramiel. The planet. The stasis pods…

But he also remembered sickbay, feeling awful, the man who wasn’t supposed to be on the ship.

Which was real? He’d never know if he stayed here.

Jim stood. A sharp tug in his hand stopped him. An IV line connected him to a bag of medication strung over the biobed. He grabbed it. It would have to come with him. Jim wobbled his way out of the side room and into sickbay proper.

Nobody was there.

That couldn’t be right. Hadn’t he just heard Bones and Spock?

What if that weird nurse was still here? He didn’t feel up to being tackled again.

He moved through sickbay. Nobody. Nowhere. No patients. No staff. No –

“What the hell are you doing?”

Jim spun around and proceeded to land on his ass. Relief jellified his limbs. “Bones! Spock! Are you real this time?”

“Help me get this idiot back to bed,” Bones said to Spock. “Dammit, Jim, Your head’s barely back together and you’re already trying to knock your brain loose.”

Strong, warm hands wrapped around his arms and hauled him upright. “Is this the _Enterpise_ orbiting the dead planet with the silent people on board, or am I awake on the _Enterprise_ orbiting a dead planet with the pod people?” Jim was dropped onto the nearest bed. “Well?”

“Your confusion is understandable, Jim, but perhaps Doctor McCoy should ensure you have not harmed yourself before we – ”

“Silent people or pod people, Spock?”

“The stasis pods are secure on the planet’s surface, and Starfleet aid ships will rendezvous with us in four days,” Spock replied.

_“Dead. Every last one of them.”_

_“How long?”_

_“I’m not sure. A while. Centuries, I’d say.”_

_“Tragic. It looks like these machines are supposed to be life support of some kind.”_

_“It failed.”_

“Everything else was a dream,” Bones said. Jim blinked hard, focusing on what his friend had to say. “Sorry for not believing anything you said, but dream you makes less sense than the current you, so my failure is actually your failure to –”

Jim held up a hand to silence Bones. His head wasn’t ready for it. “Ramiel?”

“Still apologising to the crew one by one,” Bones said. “We set him up in the guest quarters. He’s currently apologising to my staff. After that, he’ll be working his way through the engineering department.” He held up a hand. “How many fingers?”

“Hah hah, one,” Jim said. He reached up and slapped it away. “You fixed my concussion?”

“Concussion? Jim, you had a blood clot. Ramiel’s saving the biggest apology for last. He nearly killed you.”

_“Wait. Did you hear that, sir?”_

_“Yeah. I did. Get your phaser out. We might not be alone here.”_

_“No, it didn’t sound like a person. I think it’s a machine of some kind.”_

“Jim? Did you hear me?” Bones asked.

“It was a misunderstanding,” Jim said. Was he remembering what had happened on the planet, before Ramiel had totally messed with his head?

“A misunderstanding?” Bones scoffed. “I’d hate to see what he does when you really piss him off.”

“Bones, the guy’s been stuck on a dead planet for a thousand years, and his people never encountered alien life before us. He panicked. I understand. He was looking out for his people. It took a while, but I got through to him. We’re all fine now, so what does it matter? I don’t need an apology. I want to make sure his people and their culture survive.”

“A logical response, Jim,” Spock said.

Jim waggled his eyebrows. “Impressed?”

Bones reached for a tricorder. “Maybe you’ve done more damage than I thought.”

“Doctor, while Jim’s logical response is highly unusual, I do not believe it is a sign of continuing neurological trouble,” Spock said.

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

“The crew’s alright?” Jim asked.

“The crew’s fine,” Bones said. “We were a bit confused when we all woke up in exosuits, but Uhura made sense of the babbling of an extremely terrified alien lifeform on the bridge. He thought he’d killed you, and that we’d kill him in response.”

“I need to see him,” Jim said.

“Later,” Bones said. He grabbed the IV bag and hung it above Jim’s head. “You need to remain under observation.”

Jim deflated. “We’re all sure this is real?”

“The confusion should wear off within an hour,” Spock said. “It is disconcerting to be unsure of what reality is actually reality. It is fascinating to me that you were able to break away within the dream and find your way back to reality.”

“Is that really what I did?” Jim asked.

“Get some rest, Jim,” Bones said. “You’ll be alright soon.”

“I feel fine.”

“I bet you do,” Bones said. “And if you still feel fine in twenty-four hours, you’ll be free to go to your quarters.”

_“Listen to me, you dumb, mouth-breathing hick! You need to open your eyes! You have to do it before it’s too late!”_

“Jim? You alright?” Bones asked.

“Yeah. I think I’m just remembering.”

Flashbacks. Had to be flashbacks.

Twenty-four hours and more neural checks than he cared to think about later, Jim was released. He didn’t mention the lingering feeling that nothing was real. It had to be a hangover from the head injury and the drifting he’d done between the dreaming and reality.

Only one person would have the answer.

Jim headed straight to the crew quarters. He stopped off in his own, grabbing a phaser.

He had to be sure.

Next, he went to the guest suite. He pressed the call button and heard a hoarse voice call for him to enter. The door opened. Jim saw Ramiel at the room’s desk.

“Captain!” Ramiel leapt to his feet and hurried to meet Jim. He was still in the exosuit, only now without the helmet. Like the

_Bodies_

Others, in the pods, he had lilac skin and heavy facial ridges. He shook Jim’s hand. “Oh, I am so pleased to see you well. I cannot apologise enough for what I did to you and your crew. If there is anything I can do to make it up to you, please, let me know.”

“By the sound of your voice, you’ve been trying your damnedest to apologise enough,” Jim said. “It’s unnecessary. Our mission is to seek out new worlds and new civilisations. That’s you. So we got off on the wrong foot, big deal. Now we’re working together for the greater good.”

“That’s a very grand way of telling me we’re now friends,” Ramiel said.

_McCoy will bring you back just to kill you if you don’t fight this!_

Jim laughed. “That’s how we roll.”

“For now, my people will accept Federation help. But as soon as we are able, we will search the stars for the rest of our species awaits. I cannot accept that we did not find a way to new worlds and grow, just as your Federation cultures have. We just have to find them.”

“I hope that you can.” 

“And if we did not, I have read about Vulcan and its destruction. Perhaps my people would be able to work with them, understand ways to move on.”

_Dead. An entire chamber filled with pods, and not a single lifesign among them._

_“Captain! Let go!”_

_“Uhura, I can’t. The wires. They’re in my hand, they’re –”_

“You’re a realist,” Jim forced himself to say.

“I have to be,” Ramiel said.

“Whatever happens, and whatever you do, don’t lose your determination,” Jim said. He gazed at the stars beyond the viewport. “It’s very easy to get lost out here. Especially when you can’t be sure what’s real and what’s a dream.” Jim pulled the phaser out of his pocket. He aimed it at Ramiel. The king backed up a step. “I have no idea if you’re real or not.”

“Captain, please, I know I’ve done wrong by you. I know you’ve been confused and injured, but I assure you, this is very real. If you shoot me, I will die.”

“See, here’s the problem with that,” Jim said. He tapped the side of his head. “I keep having these flashes. Blinks of memory. And in those blinks, I’m in that chamber on your world and every single stasis pod contains a body way, way past resuscitation. I go to the console, and then things get weird. And every now and then I can hear Uhura shouting at me. I know it’s her, because she still tells me I’m a dumb hick when she’s really, really pissed with me. But I can’t figure out if it’s a memory or if she’s out there, right now, trying to wake me up.”

“Captain –”

“Enough!” Jim shouted. “Tell me what you are. The truth this time. Or I really will shoot you.”

The feat and tension dropped out of Ramiel’s face. “Shooting me in a dream will hardly stop me. I’ve never met anyone like you. You created an entirely separate dream for yourself, one where everything’s fine, and yet still you fight.”

“What do you want from me and my crew?” Jim demanded.

“My people are all dead,” Ramiel said. “I’ve failed. I came out of my pod and I was the only survivor. Can you imagine that, Captain? You’re charged with protecting these people, but how would you feel if they died and you did not?”

“I’d feel awful, but I wouldn’t take it out on peaceful explorers.”

“All you had to do was give in to the dream. You still have the chance. You can live out your life in your dreams. All you need to do is let go.”

“And then what?”

“Then I can live again. With you. Here, in a new dream. You have a galaxy in your head, Jim! I only ever had a planet. I need something new. You can give that to me.”

“You survived,” Jim said. “But you’re not in a body.”

“No. I’m a consciousness, trapped in a computer network. There’s nowhere I can go. Nowhere I haven’t been since the moment my body went into stasis and my mind entered the shared dream. But when I got there, I was alone. Nobody else was there. I was supposed to share the dream with two thousand other minds. Instead, I was alone, on a ghost of my world. For a thousand years! Imagine that, Captain! A thousand years of waiting. Alone! And then your ship comes along, but you didn’t hear me. Didn’t see me. You were the only people to come along, but if I didn’t reach out, you’d pass me by and for all I knew I’d be alone for another millennium. I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t bear the thought. What else was I supposed to do?”

“Burying me in dreams isn’t going to help you,” Jim said. “It’s the same as I told you before; attacking us won’t help you. You have my attention now. You have to talk to me. The Federation could still help you.”

“Help me? I am trapped in a computer. I no longer have a body. I no longer have a people. I am who I said I was. I am King Ramiel. It was my duty to bring these people back. But I failed. They’re all dead. I am dead. Look at me! Everything I am is stuck in a machine! All that my people ever were lives in here. I can walk through our entire history, but I will always be alone.”

“Not if some of your people founded a colony. We could help you find it. You wouldn’t have to be alone.”

“All the more reason I need your ship.” Ramiel approached him. “I’ve tried the indirect way through you, trying to learn how to operate it.”

“My crew were never here, were they?”

“No,” Ramiel said. “It was always a dream. You split it in two and drifted between them. You are the strangest, most stubborn person I’ve ever met. Besides, I thought perhaps there was something to your Federation, but I do not want to wait and work to their schedule. Why should I? You’re here now, so I will use you as I see fit.”

“No, you won’t,” Jim said.

“I’ve tried wrapping you up in dream after dream, but you fight too hard. I’m using what little power remains to make one last demand.”

“Demands aren’t –”

“Give me your ship so that I may search the stars for my people!”

“I can’t do that,” Jim said.

“I’ve tried to be patient and kind. I’ve tried to offer you a dream to live in, a safe place, but you continue to fight. You won’t accept it. So I’ll have to be firmer.” Ramiel stood directly in front of Jim. “Do it, or I will destroy you.” His hands snapped forward. He pressed hard on Jim’s skull. “I will erase you from your own mind, and put myself in there. And then, once I am aboard that wondrous ship of yours, I will walk through the hallways and murder anyone who stands in my way.”

A fog descended. Jim’s body fell away. His memories were shrouded. Hazy. Nothing made sense; not where he was, not what was happening, maybe not even who he was.

“ _Captain, it’s Uhura. I’ve hacked into the computer. I think I’m in their communication network, which means I’m speaking directly into your brain. You have no choice but to listen this time. We’re working hard to break you out of this computer network, but the power reserves are almost drained and you will die if we don’t disconnect you before then. Whatever’s holding you in there doesn’t want to let you go. We’re going to need your help to –”_

“Damn you all!”

Jim staggered back. Ramiel stalked away from him. They were no longer aboard the _Enterprise._ Or, rather, the illusion of the ship had broken. In its place was Ramiel’s bleak, dead world.

“Not only do you fight me, but they do, too!” Ramiel whined. “I want to live. I want to be out of this place. I don’t deserve to die here!”

“You aren’t taking my body or my ship to do it,” Jim said. “Release me, and I swear we will do everything in our power to preserve your mind.”

“I don’t want preservation!” Ramiel spat. “I demand life!”

“Right now it’s your only option. Your world is dead. Your body has decayed beyond treatment. You’ve been trapped in a computer network, but if you release me and let me speak with my crew, we could come up with a solution.”

“I want a solution _now_!”

Jim rubbed his hands over his face. Why did negotiations sometimes feel like he had to deal with out of control toddlers? “What you want I can’t give you. I can’t give you my ship.”

“Then you are not leaving!” Ramiel turned back to him. The fog reached for Jim again, clogging up his memories, stealing them. “You will take my place here. You will haunt this dead world while I –”

“What if I could give you another ship?”

The fog receded. “What?”

“What if I could provide you another ship, one you could download yourself into?”

“I want the _Enterprise._ ”

“ _You really need to hurry this along,”_ Uhura’s disembodied voice said. “ _Leonard’s shouting at me to shout at you about brain damage and it’s very distracting. The power levels are fading. You’re going to die.”_

“I’m running out of time,” Ramiel said. “Give me your ship!”

“No. You don’t need anything so big. Even if you exist digitally, there’s no way you could run it alone. And my crew would’t help you.”

“But the Federation –”

“Won’t respond well to a hostage taker. But if we found you a probe, one you could maintain independently, your journey to find a trace of your people would be far easier.”

Ramiel stared at him. “What you’re talking about isn’t like the life I once had.”

“You said a thousand years have passed,” Jim said. “You’re beyond organic life now. You have to accept that, otherwise you’ll truly die. But right now, you have an opportunity to live on. You could use the probe to travel the universe and experience it in ways the rest of us can’t imagine. And if you wanted a body, robotics have come a long way. Downloading yourself into such a device might not be impossible.”

 _“Sir, the power is going to fail in thirty seconds. You will both die!_ ”

“You hear that, Ramiel? Your refusal to accept change will kill us both. But if you let us help you, things will change. You want to escape this place, and yet fear is stopping you. You can’t have it your way, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t an alternative.”

“I don’t have enough power.”

“You will if you release me. How much of a drain on your system is it to hold me here?”

“You swear you’ll help me?” Ramiel hissed.

“I swear,” Jim said.

“Do not fail me, Captain.”

The floor gave out beneath his feet. Jim plummeted. His back hit something hard. He jolted upwards. Hands pressed him down. Voices shouted back and forth. One cut through all the noise.

“We’ve got you,” Uhura said. Her voice was distorted, coming over his exosuit’s internal comline. “You’re awake, I promise.”

“Uhura?” His voice was thick with sleep. “What’s going on? Ramiel is –”

“Going to be fine. The power levels stabilised. Scotty thinks we could – hey! Stay awake!” A sharp poke to the ribs kept him from nodding off. “There. It’s rude to fall asleep when someone’s talking to you.”

“Sorry,” Jim said. He blinked hard but it didn’t help. Wherever he was, it was very dark. Uhura’s helmeted head was a mere outline above his head. “Ship’s okay?”

“The ship’s fine. It was never in trouble. None of us were, just you. As soon as you can walk, we’re going to the surface and you’re beaming straight to sickbay. Leonard’s got a bed waiting.”

Jim groaned. “Does it have to be sickbay?”

“You’ve been down here for two days. You haven’t eaten, you haven’t exactly been asleep, and you are going to stink. But by all means, if you want this to be a public affair, I’ll have you beamed to the mess hall.”

“Point taken.” He reached out with a hand. “Okay, I’m ready.”

Uhura turned away. “Sulu, give me a hand.”

Sulu appeared. “Hi, sir.”

Jim waggled stiff fingers. “Hello.”

Uhura and Sulu hauled him upright. They held tight as he took a moment to regain his balance. He looked and saw all the dead people in their pods. Other members of Jim’s crew stood by.

“Jim!” Scotty came forward. He handed over the large power conversion unit he held to the nearest hapless ensign. “Good to see you back with us, sir!”

“Good to see you too, Scotty. Listen, you need to find a way to transfer Ramiel out of this network and into a –” His knees buckled. Uhura and Sulu struggled to keep him upright. “Dammit, sorry.”

“Forget about it, sir,” Sulu said.

“Scotty, you need to find a way to transfer the computer network here to a probe. It’s a long story, but it’s the only way to keep the last survivor of this world alive.”

“Understood.”

“Just be careful,” Jim said. “Don’t let him get into your heads.”

“Don’t worry,” Scotty said. “We’ll give the system enough juice to sustain itself, but not enough for it to poke into anyone’s head.”

“Good to know.”

Uhura and Sulu helped walk him back to the surface. Once there, Uhura called up to the ship for transport. “Send us straight to sickbay,” she told the transporter chief. “I’m sure Doctor McCoy can’t wait to see us.”

Jim sighed.

“Energize,” Uhura said.

A moment of bright light and the next thing Jim knew, he was in sickbay.

Again.

“Is it real this time?” He asked, pulling off the helmet. The relatively fresh air of sickbay filled his lungs. “Wow. That feels great.”

Bones was there, already scanning. “Sit down before you fall down, Jim.”

“I’m fine. Just need something to eat.”

“Sulu, Uhura, let go of him.”

“What, wait, don’t!” Their support withdrew. Jim’s legs gave out. He just about caught himself on a bed before he hit the deck. “Mutiny,” Jim grumbled. “I see mutiny.”

Uhura removed her own helmet. “See you later, sir.”

“It’s good to have you back,” Sulu added, tucking his helmet under his arm.

“Thanks,” Jim said, dutifully climbing onto the bed before a certain doctor’s withering glare reduced him to goo. “And, Uhura? Thanks for finding a way to talk to me. I never would’ve found my way out without you.”

“Anytime.”

“Alright, out, both of you.” Bones shooed them out of sickbay. He grabbed a tricorder, a hypo, and a tray of medication, then returned to Jim’s side. “You’re malnourished, dehydrated, and your brain chemistry isn’t right. You’re staying here for at least the next twenty-four hours.”

“How do I know if this is real or not?” Jim asked. “It doesn’t feel any different to Ramiel’s world.”

Bones chose that moment to hypo him. “I told you, your brain chemistry is messed up. Once it’s back in balance, your sense of reality will return.”

“I thought I was in the real world so many times,” Jim said. He looked to his friend. “How can I ever be sure if this is any more real than what happened before?”

To Jim’s surprise, Bones ruffled his greasy hair. “Get some sleep. Real sleep. I promise, when you wake up, you’ll know where you are.”

He gripped Bones’ arm. “Tell Spock we might need to give this guy a probe. And – ”

“Jim.” Bones gently removed his hand. “It’s alright. Rest.”

“I can’t. Every time I’ve woke up here, it’s been another dream.”

“It’s real this time,” Bones said.

“I think you said that twice before.”

“Alright, I’ll make you a deal,” Bones said. “I’ll treat you, then you can get some real sleep in your quarters.”

“Or I could just take a shower and get back to the bridge,” Jim said. “If this is real, I have to make sure Ramiel doesn’t pull anyone else in. And if it isn’t real –”

“Either I treat you and you get some sleep in your quarters, or I’ll put you on medical leave for a week with no access to the ship’s computer. Maybe I’ll have Spock train you in the ways of Vulcan meditation techniques.”

“He tried already, remember? I think that’s the closest he’s come to killing me since that time on the bridge.”

“You accept the deal?” Bones asked.

“Fine,” Jim said. “We have a deal.”

* * *

Two days later, Jim stood with Spock in a shuttlebay, staring at a modified probe. Scotty put the finishing touches onto the computer interface.

“Well, Ramiel? What do you think?” Jim asked.

Ramiel’s disembodied voice filled the air. “It will suffice.”

Spock’s eyebrow twitched. Jim smothered a grin.

“I’ve uploaded your planet’s engineering resources along with you,” Scotty said. “Hopefully it will help you find the rest of your people.”

“I understand,” Ramiel said. “And what of the shared dreaming?”

“I have removed that aspect of your computer’s programming,” Spock said. “It was far too great a drain on the probe’s power resources. You must focus your efforts on finding the descendants of your original world.”

“Yes. Of course,” Ramiel said.

“You’re ready to go.” Scotty pulled his head out of the circuitry and bolted the panel into place. He gave it a pat. “Take care of yourself out there.”

“Thank you, Mr Scott,” Ramiel said.

“Stay safe out there,” Jim said. “It’s a big universe, but it’s full of wonders. If your people survived, they’re out there somewhere.”

“I’m sure they are. Thank you, all of you, for your help. And please, once again, forgive me for all that I’ve done. I was foolish and arrogant. I was… frightened.”

“It’s alright, Ramiel,” Jim said.

“I will never harm another organic being again.”

“That’s good to know,” Jim said. “Just don’t be afraid to reach out every now and then. People may be more willing to help than you think.”

“I know that now.”

“Good luck out there,” Jim said.

“Same to you.”

Jim, Spock and Scotty went up to the flight control office. Jim left it to the officers there to see the probe out. He’d never admit it to another person, but he never wanted to hear from the digital king again.

“So, Spock, what’s next?” Jim asked.

“We have located a planetary system two days from here. Long range scans suggest it is uninhabited but may an acceptable location for a Federation colony.”

“Uninhabited?” Jim asked. 

“Yes, Captain. There are no signs of lifeforms ever having visited the area.”

“No technology.”

“None on long range sensors.”

“Sounds wonderful.”

**Author's Note:**

> My favourite Star Trek episodes are always the weird ones where you never know what's real and what isn't :D
> 
> Thanks so much for reading <3 Stay safe!


End file.
